Sweet Clementine
by craigbond007
Summary: This is just my interpretation of what might have happened between CR and Bond 22. Also sheds light on Bond's origins in the secret service...


Rated T for minor coarse language, action violence, and minor adult themes. This is Bond, after all.

Author's Note: This is my first James Bond fanfic, I'm new to FanFiction, so read and review please!!! All comments welcome!

Disclaimer: I don't own 007, 006, Vesper, Fisher, Dryden, or M. If you don't recognize any of the other names, then they are my creation. P.S. I based characters off friends of mine but gave them ficticious names, and elements of my life were used as storyline.

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_**SWEET CLEMENTINE**_

The heart can always mend for anyone. Anyone…….

Except For James Bond…..

The heart of a 00 can get cold after the events that went down at the Casino Royale. And not only that, but witnessing the love of his life drown before his eyes. Vesper Lynd was someone he thought he could spend the rest of his life with. He even resigned from MI6 and had plans to ask Vesper to marry him. Until that fateful day….

The day that would mark the last day he ever made love to her. The last day he would hold her. Kiss her. The last day she put her hands into his. Then the phone call, the renovated villa, sound of bullets, explosions, and her saying she was sorry as she locked her self into the elevator as the villa was sinking.

August 6, 2006

He was sitting aboard his yacht, in the delta just before Venice on the Mediterranean, talking to M on his cell phone.

"Come back as soon as you can, we need you," She said.

"Will do."

"If you do need time…"

"Why should I need more time?" He snapped. "The job's done, and the bitch is dead."

He then looked in Vesper's bag and found her cell phone. He looked in her text message drafts and found a lead. A valuable one. He put the cell away, dug into his pocket, and pulled out a ring. THE RING. He did nothing, except toss it into the water, watching it sink along with the feelings and love he had for the girl. The traitor. The bitch.

"Hello?"

"Mr. White? We need to talk."

"Who is this?"

A shot rang out. The old man crawled to the steps of his home on Lake Como, Italy. His knee was fucked and knew it. He couldn't stop himself from crying. The pain was awful. Then he cut off his sobs as a chill ran down his spine. Two black shoes stepped up in front of him. He looked up to see a man in a navy blue 3-piece Saville Row suit. The man was young, late 30's, with short blonde hair spiked in the front. The young man opened his mouth and spoke in a slightly deep Cockney accent.

"The name's Bond….. James Bond."

Two days later, London, England

When Bond arrived in M's office, he had a surprise waiting in the brig. When M found Mr. White there, she decided Bond was mentally unfit for more active duty at this point. She gave him paid vacation until August 14, 2007.

Bond was delighted, but also annoyed. M told him to come 5 days a week, to be evaluated mentally, and for classes to help him be able to be ready to face situations like he did at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. He did like going to classes though. There were plenty of beautiful girls he took a fancy to. It was a lot like school, he thought. And at lunches, he and his colleagues would go to one nice particular place in London.

The only man he hung out with the most was a young agent named Alec Trevelyan. He was the same age, albeit Alec being a month older. They met in early training when he was 29 and Bond still 28. They still were thick as thieves and joked about old age to each other, Bond going so far as to joke that Alec's younger sister was giving him grey hair. It always kind of pissed Alec off, but then later they'd laugh about it over a pint at the nearby pub. They had so much in common, they were both orphans, but Alec sadly never knew his parents, they died in 1969, after Alec's 1st birthday. James' parents passed in 1979, when he was 11, after sustaining injuries in a climbing accident. Since the first day they met, they were the best of friends and the only family they had.

Alec was the first one to know about Vesper's death, and the only one there to comfort him, aside from M, whom Bond considered to be like a mother. She drew the cards, knew how Bond worked. She also cared about him a great deal, even if she didn't show it, but Bond knew it. She usually, if not always pleasantly, gave Bond lessons that kept him alive. Even if she knew that it was too early to promote him to 00 status and, now going on October '06, he was only 007 for 3 months.

After Christmas holidays, someone new came to MI6. She was beautiful. She was slim, but still had a slender, elegant body. One look at her face and Bond was at first horrified, he thought it was as if Vesper was a ghost, or, in the flesh, had become a zombie. He decided he wanted to meet her, and, since she had become friends with one of Bond's female colleagues, asked for an introduction.

"Bond…. James Bond." Was all he could say. He was captivated by every inch of her face, even if it resembled that bitch he loved.

"Chance Chester" was how she introduced herself, and then she went on her way.

Soon, March '07 came around there wasn't much change. Bond forgot 2006 was over. Alec turned 39. He had the luxury of dating a couple of women over a period of time. But Bond wasn't having much luck. He took a long look back at his past

Ever since he joined MI6 in 1996, he never had real love. He didn't care for girls much then. In 2000, he started to know these girls better and after many failed advances, he just gave up.

In September 2005, Bond, Alec, and most of the colleagues they knew had to move from the headquarters in the countryside to the big MI6 building at Vauxhall Cross, in London, at the edge of the Thames River. A spectacular view. More women, more luxury, and more friends for Bond and Alec.

That was a good year for him. He met M, who was there for a year after replacing a male M. This M took a liking to Bond. She was intrigued by this mysterious, cold man, who had a record of breaking rules, but getting the job done. He was an efficient killing machine when he joined the Special Air Service when he was 18. He served during the first Gulf War in the middle east. He had discovered many WMDs and killed many enemies, and may or may not have been one of the factors bringing the war to an end. His many feats earned him the rank of Commander and a recommendation to Her Majesty's Secret Service. And in 1996 he was there.

M like these statistics when they came to her attention in 2005. She sent him on many missions, doing various espionage tasks and using aliases to get to the big fish, but he never killed anyone while at MI6.

In July, 2006, when he was 38 years old, Bond was sent to kill two men. One, know as Fisher, in Venice in the bathroom of a cricket court, a hard kill, the man played dead after getting his head shoved into a sink, thus having to be shot after nearly catching Bond while his back was turned.

The second was much easier. His name was Dryden, and Fisher was his contact. He was a crooked MI6 section chief in Prague, Czech Republic, who M discovered was selling secrets. He was killed by one bullet to the head. Easier? Yes. Considerably.

Now Bond was a full fledged 00 agent. His number was 007. His first assignment as 007 was in Madagascar. He was to bring in a bomb maker to be questioned about how terrorist groups are being financed. However, due to Bond's partner doing something stupid, Bond was forced to fuck up the mission. It got even worse when he had to take it into an embassy and cause the guards to shoot it up. Then to escape, he had to kill the man he needed alive.

A curse became a blessing. In the events that followed, the terrorist banker was discovered and, due to Bond's intervention, he was bankrupt and lost one of his cilent's money. He set up a poker game at the Casino Royale to recoup his losses. Bond was sent to play, and there he met Vesper (The Bitch), who was sent by the treasury to manage Bond's funds.

All this, of course, leads to where Bond was now.

2007

Classes were fun and Bond was starting to get the pieces of his soul back together. April 15 had passed and Bond was now 39. He and Alec went to the pub to celebrate two things, one: Bond's birthday, and two: Alec's promotion to 00 status the previous week.

He was now 006, which made Bond happy because at 00 meetings they could sit beside each other. He still had his eye on the Chance Chester, dark haired girl who looked so much like Vesper.

But she wasn't the only one on Bond's mind. There was another girl, Clementine Niles, who, oddly enough, was Alec's next door neighbour, and had once dated him in the past. She joined MI6 when Bond was in his year as an operative. There were few whose heads she didn't turn.

The rest of April and May went by fast. When June 25 came around, there was a ceremony for the graduates of the academy. And since Bond spent his weekends teaching, he attended, then there was a party. Most people he knew came just for a good time. Clementine was there, Chance, many of the women he knew. Most of them were his friends even though he used to like some of them. For some reason they thought he was strange. Wasn't that laugh, when he was on missions, he had them at hello, even nearly marrying one! But at MI6 they just want to be friends. That was okay. He really didn't care now that Vesper was dead. But why was he having feelings for Chance and Clementine? _Whatever the reason, _he thought, _It's good to feel something again…_

The day after the big ceremony, Bond took a private plane to Ottawa. He went to concert to see Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. He always thought they were good singers, but never mentioned it to others, since country music wasn't the big thing in England.

And even better, they started by singing the song "Chasing Cars." It was one of Bond's favourite songs, originally done by Snow Patrol. If only he could get tickets to see them…

On the 29th of June, he was back in England. He was invited to a small party by one of his female colleagues, Peregrine Carruthers, someone he liked in his 8th year, out in the countryside, only a few miles away from his flat in the Chelsea district in London. Alec couldn't come, he was on assignment in Germany, and Chance, who was close friends with Bond at this point, was on leave, somewhere in Scotland, but to his surprise, there was Clementine. She and Peregrine were close friends. Bond was one of the few to stay the night.

At midnight, there was a small poker game which consisted of four players: Bond, Clementine, and two other 00's: Bill Fairbanks a.k.a. 002, and Jack Mason a.k.a. 003. Peregrine was there to watch, as well as John Maltravers and another female Bond knew since his 8th year at MI6. Her name was Sass, one Bond had once taken interest in after the March break this year. She was a beauty. Her blonde hair shone even without light.

Early into the game, Bond was losing chips fast. The rest were in the game still. Including Clementine.

"Take my chips, they'll be better use to you then me," he said. But she probably knew that Bond cared about her.

The next day, Bond didn't have to go to MI6. He had finished his classes and his mental evaluation with flying colours. He would have told her to reconsider, but he didn't want M to know he had feelings for Clementine. He didn't want it to seem like he wasn't a cold-hearted bastard anymore.

He then was told about a big event at a one of the skateboard parks, so, not wanting to sit on his arse all day, he got into his vintage Aston Martin DB5 and drove down, and who better to see there than his old friend Peregrine….. and Clementine. He didn't speak to her, know that Peregrine told her about his feelings towards her.

After a brilliant display of fireworks, Bond headed back to his flat. He was sad to know he wouldn't see his friends for a while, but he did know that he could talk to most of them on MSN. It had been a while since he had been online. The people he talked to most were Peregrine and Chance, who was back in England, much to Bond's delight.

Sass was somewhat cheery on MSN. She had told James that she was in love with him. For a while he was sharing the feelings with her. But then it dawned on him. He had a nightmare where he was in the situation of saving Vesper from the sunken elevator…. But it wasn't her…. It was Chance.

He told Sass the truth, but strangely, she suddenly stopped caring. Bond realized he hurt Sass, and himself, but he was determined.

Then one night Chance revealed on MSN she knew about his strong feelings.

"Before I go to bed I guess I have to say something," Bond typed

"LOL and what would that be???"

"I think I love you…"

Bond wasn't stupid though. He kind of thought she didn't like him. Maybe she didn't.

But one day, he was having an online chat with Peregrine that put someone back on his mind

Someone that sent chills up his spine.

Someone he didn't realize he loved the whole time

Sweet Clementine...

Thanks for reading my first effort at fan fiction. Please read and review. Chapter 2 will be up sometime after the 26th of August. And for those who were confused in this chapter, we're where Bond's at now, so no flashbacks, and expect more action and kills.


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